Ophthalmic technicians are two- or four-year college graduates certified in two-year training programs at academic medical centers; they are trained in tasks related primarily to outpatient care. The University of Florida Department of Ophthalmology annually trains five ophthalmic technicians, each of whom spends an average of 40 weeks per year assisting in the diagnostic work-up and management of ophthalmology patients at the eye clinic of Gainesville Veterans Administration Hospital and Shands Teaching Hospital at the University of Florida. The proposed interdisciplinary investigation will seek to measure the actual and potential impact of the ophthalmic technician trainee in the eye clinic, in terms of cost-effectiveness, quality-of-care, and patient and staff acceptance. These objectives will be accomplished through task-time recordings, protocol-assisted multiple examinations of the same patients by ophthalmology technicians, residents and attendings, interviews and observations, and mathematical modelling techniques. The data accrued from this study would form a basis for developing optimal staffing patterns as well as curricula for ophthalmic technician training; in a larger sense, the study may serve as an analytical prototype for similar studies in other specialties.